


Amazing Grace

by Lucky107



Series: The Seventh Born [12]
Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: F/M, Gen, Graphic Description of Corpses, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2019-05-15 13:00:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14790983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lucky107/pseuds/Lucky107
Summary: The grief hits Roberta hard.





	Amazing Grace

It’s been twenty-four hours since Cameron Burke was laid to rest in the prison yard.

Roberta Caine doesn’t even attend what would have to suffice as a funeral service for the fallen Cougars, but nobody thinks much of her absence.

The grief hits Roberta hard.

It hits everyone hard, supposes Earl Whitehorse, but he vividly remembers being on-call the day her daddy died.

As the cruiser rolled to a stop on the beaten dirt path that wound up to the Caine residence, everything moved in slow motion. He only knew he was running because his boots failed to find traction on the pebbles and stones that rolled beneath his feet and he nearly fell in his hurry to reach the yawning barn door beckoning to him up on the hill.

_He’s dead_ , Shell Anna’s voice echoed in his head as he went, over and over.

Virgil Caine hung motionless in the center of the barn like a crash test dummy, strung up from the rafters by his broken neck. His face was pallid and his lips were blue, open eyes bulging in their sockets.

The hot summer air reeked of piss and decay, stinging Earl’s nose.

“ _Fuck_ —”

_He’s dead_ —

Earl didn’t even see Roberta at first, lying among the straw and sawdust on the floor, as he rushed to cut Virgil down. He tripped over her as carelessly as one might trip over a rock.

It was impossible to know how long she had been there, with her knees curled into her chest and her bloodshot eyes unblinking, but she stared up at the lifeless husk of her father as if she were in some kind of trance. Her lips were moving, but her voice had since become lost.

He will never forget the weight of her lanky form as he carried Roberta out of the barn that day.

Following the unfortunate circumstances of her father’s death, Roberta retreated into herself like a frightened animal and everybody feared the worst.

It took a full week before she spoke even a single word to anyone.

They came to Earl Whitehorse: “ _He’s dead_.”

It was an open secret that he had walked away from that barn a different man, a _changed_ man, and that not two months later his wife had filed for a divorce because of it. In the years that followed he kept a close eye on Roberta, feeling in-part responsible for her recovery as the officer who first found her that day.

Roberta immediately closed herself off to the world and chose a difficult path of booze, marijuana and questionable company.

Earl remained the one person she could confide in—she had become his last connection to Hope County and, in time, she bounced back from her grief.

That was exactly why he had recruited her into the Sheriff’s Office in the first place.

She had _heart_.

But the Bliss had hit Roberta hard, too, and if there was one person in all of Hope County who had what it took to pull her back from the edge again, it was Earl Whitehorse.

He comes across Roberta exactly where he suspects he might: she’s sitting in front of a crude cross that reads _Cameron Burke_ with a Bible open across her knees. Her face is turned upwards, eyes resting on the American flag that hangs above.

It’s a symbol of all the people the marshal was once sworn to protect—all the people that he so needlessly died for who would never even know his name.

Cameron had his own demons, but he had been one of the _good_ guys.

“For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”

Roberta turns to face Earl at the sound of his voice, eyes red and puffy with tears.

“C'mon,” he says, gentle, as he extends a hand to her. “How’s about you and me go for a little walk?”

For a long moment Roberta contemplates his offer.

Earl fears he sees rejection flash across her troubled eyes, but then she lays the Bible down before the cross with painstaking care and reaches for his hand.

“Upsy-daisy.”

They exit the prison grounds arm-in-arm like the man who made all of the right choices in his life might walk his baby girl down the aisle on her wedding day, but that’s a fantasy that neither of them will ever have the chance to live out.

The weather is wonderful for a stroll: it’s not yet autumn with its wintry chill, but not so hot as to be unpleasant in the sunshine. And for the first time in years the people of Henbane River can _breathe_ without fear—Roberta played no small part in that.

But it’s hard to find heroism in failure.

They come to a stop in a field of wildflowers overlooking the Henbane River.

“You and Burke were awful close, huh? I could see it in the helicopter: he took a real shine to you, kid,” Earl begins. “Why don’t we take some of these flowers back for him, to let him know that you’re thinking of him? A proper bouquet might help preserve—” _prolong_ “—some of that vibrancy of his.”

The sheriff leans down to pluck a daisy at the base of its stem and that’s when Roberta first notices the man standing out in the field.

_Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me…_

The voice belongs to Cameron Burke.

It’s so much brighter than his drug-addled repetition of _Oh The Bliss_ that she almost doesn’t recognize it.

He’s looking out over the Henbane River with an air of tranquility that leaves Roberta’s eyes damp with tears. It’s the same tranquility she felt in him just before he took his leap of faith. A pit hollows in her stomach and she takes one, two stumbling steps into the field.

Cameron turns around as she approaches him, as if aware of her intentions to reach out to him one last time, and it mirrors his leap perfectly.

Their eyes meet.

He smiles.

Only in that moment—when she looks into the hollow eyes of his ghost—does she realise that this tranquility is exactly what she felt in him on the night they spent together in that lonely motel room in Missoula.

The marshal had found his salvation long before he ever wound up lost in the Bliss.

It had been Roberta all along.

She reaches for Cameron’s hand just as she had on the statue before he leapt and this time she reaches him, but her hand passes right through his as if reaching into a fog of dry ice. _Cold_.

_I once was lost, but now am found…_

As Roberta falls onto her knees amid the daisies and black-eyed Susans, Cameron follows her down, slow, and the illusion of his guiding hand burns a permanent chill into her shoulder. It was the first place he ever touched her, when he turned her around on that old bar stool to appraise her, and it had just become the last.

Roberta cries as she fails to find any physical memory of his warmth to hold onto.

_He’s dead_ —

It’s no longer the silent tears that once left her cheeks damp with evidence of her lonely suffering, but loud and tormented cries that echo across the glade. Her shoulders hitch with each sob that wracks her body, again and again and again.

Earl feels sick to his stomach as he watches Roberta fall apart in that field of wildflowers, just as she had in her daddy’s barn.

She’s one of the toughest kids he’s ever known.

It doesn’t seem fair.

To distract himself he seeks out a spot beneath the shade of a sturdy old tree where he can keep a watchful eye on Roberta without interrupting the natural progression of her grief. As much as it hurts to hear it, she _needs_ this if she ever hopes to make a recovery and Hope County needs _her_.

As the sun crawls slowly over the distant hills, the echoes of her howling sing across the Henbane River.

_I once was blind, but now I see…_


End file.
